On July 12 this year, bbc.com reported: Pope Francis said he was hurt by Turkey’s decision to turn Istanbul’s Ayasofia back into a mosque.
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It is written: My house must be a house of prayer. [Mateja evaņģēlijs 21:13] Turning a church into a museum and stopping to worship it always means desecrating the church. Of course, it is even worse to make it a vegetable store, a tractor garage or a morgue, and even worse, to level it with the land, as has been done thousands of times in 20th century Russia. Orthodox, Catholic and Lutheran churches, Buddhist temples and Muslim mosques were muddy or completely destroyed. They are now being restored and made into houses of prayer again.
What is wrong with the fact that in 1935, during the days of secular Kemalism, the desecrated mosque Ajasofija is now becoming a real Muslim mosque again? It will no longer be just a museum. Until May 1453, it served as an Orthodox church, then for almost half a thousand years – as a Muslim church. At that time, it was accepted that faith is determined by one who has power. Have a small number of Catholic and Lutheran churches in the western provinces of Russia rebuilt into Orthodox churches in the 18th and 19th centuries? But the great Mosque of Cordoba – about the Catholic Church? It has happened everywhere. Moreover, it is surprising that the Ottomans left so many churches for Christians. In Spain, after the reconquest, no working mosque survived and all Muslims were expelled.
It seems to me that the opportunity to pray together again in God in St. Sophia is a message of great joy to all believers, both Christians, Jews and Muslims. Are we really going to act like the woman in Solomon’s court who agreed to kill the newborn baby so that neither I nor you would be?
And I hope that the church, which has become a mosque, will function as a Christian church on some days, but most of the time, like the churches of the Moscow Kremlin, also as a museum.
The statements of Metropolitan Ilarion and his father Andrei Kurayev that mosaics and frescoes were torn off the walls of Sofia again is nothing but a disgusting provocation. The cultural people of Istanbul have already worked out a project to make the walls of the church illuminated here by manipulating the lights, to sink here again in the dark during Friday’s prayers.
I very much hope that the prayers of Christians and Muslims at the Supreme Shrine of Constantinople-Istanbul will help people understand how to love those who think differently and God, rather than inciting fanatics who murmur about the “cross over St. Sophia” even more. That time has passed forever.
Ayasofia has become a mosque again. Byzantologists I know consider this event a cultural disaster. Many of our Orthodox people see it as a kind of religious humiliation. My attitude, I must admit, is much calmer. Orthodoxy lost this peculiar church in 1453. Here it was a disaster. The rather short time in which the already excavated but partially restored church existed as a museum is over. It is to be hoped that this time it will not be distorted so much. In any case, it promises us.
The main theme of the Christian church is the liturgy. Not a simple prayer, but a Christian liturgy with its Sacrifice. Another wonder of the world, the peer of Sofia in Constantinople and, one might say, his sister, Ravenna San Vital, follows this theme very clearly. Well, Sanvital has also become a museum in principle – without any Muslim intervention. And it seems to me that she, this church, longs for her soul. I am not lucky to see Ajasofia myself. However, SS Averincev said that it was the strongest experience of his life.
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